Lumpshop

Lump shop is Lauren Lubell & Alina Buevich – a small artisan candle sculpting operation based out of San Francisco, California. Working as designers by day and artisan chandlers (candle-makers) by night, we started a small business and world called Lump Shop.
Driven by our mutual interest in learning new processes, we crafted, molded,
and poured each candle by hand.

Branding

We originally called our business ‘‘Lumpelstiltskin". We liked the nod to the making process and the feeling of an old folk tale but soon found the name cumbersome—it was then simplified to ‘‘Lump Shop’’.

Although the actual candlemaking process itself was more collaborative, I handled most of the visuals, including but not limited to the logo, web design, and printed marketing materials.

Research & Development

As an industrial designer, Lauren had an established skillset
with ceramic mold making and casting, which proved
invaluable to the art of candle making. After extensive
online research and controlled experiments, we developed
our own custom wax mixture of paraffin, soy, additives, and colorant—this special mix ensured each candle looked
vibrant and resistant to environmental changes.

After finalizing the composition of the wax mixture, we did
more tests to finalize our pouring procedures and optimal
temperatures. After a few months, the basic structure of our
process could be broken down into four basic steps: sculpt, mold, pour wax, take out finished candle.

West Coast Craft

West Coast Craft is a bi-annual juried exhibition of artist and designer craftspeople that takes place at Fort Mason in San Francisco. In the winter of 2017, we were accepted into the WCC Intro Scholarship program and given a free booth to exhibit our first collection of candles.

Although restricted by a tight budget and strict trade show fire code, we stood out from the crowd with a unique hand-painted table design and by playing up bright colors and textures. Each display candle character had its own island puddle to live on while the majority of the candles were prepackaged in their own individual boxes. This worked out well for easy purchasing and customers buying holiday gifts.